Named one of the Best Books of 1987 by Library Journal
Selected by Utne Reader as part of its Alternative Canon in 1998
One of Hungry Mind Review's Best 100 Books of the 20th Century
Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity. Borderlands/La Frontera remaps our understanding of what a border is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us. This edition, coming March 1, 2022, will be a more condensed edition, containing only the original text from 1987, and will be at a more accessible price point for readers. For those looking for a scholarly context to this crucial work, the Critical Edition is currently available.
The emotional and intellectual impact of the book is disorienting and powerful...all languages are spoken, and survival depends on understanding all modes of thought. In the borderlands new creatures come into being. Anzaldúa celebrates this new mestiza in bold, experimental writing. -- The Village Voice
Anzaldúa's pulsating weaving of innovative poetry with sparse informative prose brings us deep into the insider/outsider consciousness of the borderlands; that ancient and contemporary, crashing and blending world that divides and unites America. -- Women's Review of Books
This critical edition of text that changed the course of Chicanx, queer, and feminist theory breathes new life into the themes still present in today's political and social climate.
At the same time this book offers insight into the construction of Anzaldúa's philosophies.
Borderlands was first published in 1987 after an organic composition process, mixing prose and poetry and integrating personal memories with a philosophical search for a consciousness-raising and coalition-building method for the oppressed. Conceptually innovative, visionary, and rebellious at the time, Borderlands has continued to be studied as a distinctive creative work and a spiritual guidebook to heal and empower Chicanxs, queer communities of color, and other marginalized groups. Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in Borderlands/La Frontera, her first book and signature work, remap our understanding of borders as psychic, social, and cultural terrains that we inhabit and that inhabit all of us.
Drawing heavily on archival research and a comprehensive literature review, this critical edition elucidates Anzaldúa's complex composition process and its centrality in the development of her philosophy and contextualizes the book within her theories and writings before and after its 1987 publication. It opens with two introductory studies; offers a corrected text, explanatory footnotes, translations, and four archival appendices; and closes with an updated bibliography of Anzaldúa's works, an extensive scholarly bibliography on Borderlands, and her biography. It also featuress features an afterword by noted Anzaldúa scholar AnaLouise Keating.
Imagine Borderlands as a timeless pyramid of ideas that has been added to, deconstructed, reconstructed, transcribed, translated, and trans-interpreted by every generation of Chicanx and non-Chicanx feminist scholars in the thirty-five years since its publication. This critical edition offers both a painstakingly articulated scholarly scaffolding around Anzaldúa's original text and a bridge into the life and memory of the author who designed the blueprint of that pyramid. -- Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Professor of Chicana/o Studies, English, and Gender Studies, UCLA
Vivancos-Pérez takes readers by the hand in this straightforward, well-crafted edition, offering a detailed introduction describing the eminent author's iterative process of writing Borderlands. The archival documents--including unpublished poetry and essays with Anzaldúa's own annotations--add flavor, temperament, and in-depth insight into the complex philosopher's early writings. Scholars, students, family, soul-mates, and friends of Anzaldúa (myself included) will be thrilled with this long-awaited, noteworthy critical edition. -- Emma Pérez, author of The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History
Ricardo F. Vivancos-Pérez's meticulous archival work and Norma Elia Cantú's life experience and expertise converge to offer a stunning resource for Anzaldúa scholars; for writers, artivists, and activists inspired by her work; and for everyone. Hereafter, no study of Borderlands will be complete without this beautiful, essential reference. -- Paola Bacchetta, Professor of Gender & Women's Studies, UC Berkeley
Readers will delight in the new pathways to Anzaldúan thought thanks to the work of the editors. Whether coming to Anzaldúan thought for the first time or returning again to a much-treasured Borderlands, the editors' loving care will enable us all to hear her call--no hay más que cambiar ... there's nothing else to do but change. -- Nancy Tuana, author of Beyond Philosophy: Nietzsche, Foucault, Anzaldúa
Bilingual English/Spanish. Gloria Anzaldúa uniquely reinterprets the famous Mexican legend of la Llorona.
Ever since she can remember, Prietita has heard frightening stories about la Llorona-the legendary ghost woman who steals children at night. One day, when Prietita goes in search of the missing herb that can help cure her mother's illness, she becomes lost in the woods. Suddenly she hears a distant crying sound and sees flashes of white in the trees. Could it be the ghost woman from her grandmother's stories?
In her second book for children, Gloria Anzaldúa reinterprets the famous Mexican legend of la Llorona, the ghost woman. Surrounded by the live oak and prickly pear of the Texas woods, Prietita discovers that la Llorona is not what people expect. In this magical story, Prietita's search for the healing rue plant turns into a powerful journey of self-discovery.
A bold collection of creative pieces and theoretical essays by women of color. Making Face, Making Soul includes over 70 works by poets, writers, artists, and activists such as Paula Gunn Allen, Norma Alarcón, Gloria Anzaldúa, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Barbara Christian, Chrystos, Sandra Cisneros, Michelle Cliff, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Elena Creef, Audre Lorde, María Lugones, Jewelle Gomez, Joy Harjo, bell hooks, June Jordan, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Janice Mirikitani, Pat Mora, Cherríe Moraga, Pat Parker, Chela Sandoval, Barbara Smith, Mitsuye Yamada, and Alice Walker.
Anzaldúa's unusual combination of scholarly research, folk tales, personal narrative, poetry and political manifesto, forms a powerful and cohesive whole. -- San Francisco Chronicle Review
Anzaldúa is an accomplished writer, able to marshal passionate intensity in support of her attempt to do away with dualities. -- Journal of the Southwest
She has chosen the most difficult task; that of mediating cultures without concession or dilution. -- Women's Review of Books
Propelled by a strong indigenist current, Anzaldúa assumes a prophetic voice to create--by mythic, spiritual, mystic, intuitive and imaginative means--a new vision... -- The Americas Review
Many of the best pieces...combine the theoretical essay with poetry and personal narration, reflecting a breadth of emotion that most people keep tightly concealed. This is the book's primary purpose, to give voice to thoughts and feelings which have been privatized and occluded. -- Publishers Weekly
Anzaldúa brings a poetic style steeped in Chicano/Chicana history and Aztec myth to bear upon issues that are too often treated in dry, theoretical terms...subverts the white middle-class perspective of much mainstream feminism with analysis, testimony, story, and song. -- Utne Reader
Having crossed the Rio Grande into Texas with his mother in search of a new life, Joaquín receives help and friendship from Prietita a brave young Mexican American girl.
Did you come from the other side? You know, from Mexico? So begins the friendship between Prietita and Joaquín, the young boy who, with his mother, has crossed the Rio Grande River to Texas in search of a new life.
Prietita, a brave young Mexican American girl, defends Joaquín from the neighborhood kids who taunt him with shouts of mojado or wetback. But what can she do to protect Joaquín and his mother from the Border Patrol as the van cruises slowly up the street toward their hiding place?
Writer Gloria Anzaldúa is a major Mexican American literary voice. Illustrator Consuelo Méndez is a noted Latin American artist. Both grew up in South Texas. In this, their first collaboration, they have captured not only the hardship of daily life on the border, but also the beauty of the landscape and the dignity and generosity of spirit that the Mexican Americans and the Mexican immigrants share.
More than twenty years after the ground-breaking anthology This Bridge Called My Back called upon feminists to envision new forms of communities and practices, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating have painstakingly assembled a new collection of over eighty original writings that offers a bold new vision of women-of-color consciousness for the twenty-first century. Written by women and men--both of color and white--this bridgewe call home will challenge readers to rethink existing categories and invent new individual and collective identities.